by Ubukata, Tow
–Who decided all this?
“People. Many of the people living in this city. And, with our future at stake, we at the facility decided that we needed to take drastic measures. So the Three Magi—myself included—all came up with our respective plans.”
–Three Magi…?
Faceman responded to Balot’s murmur with a silent smile and nod. “One of us appealed to the potential usefulness of the forbidden technology to society, and pushed the Scramble 09 bill through, got the Broilerhouse to recognize it. The same law that allows you to live right now—and permits Dr. Easter and Oeufcoque their continued existences.”
–You said “one of us.” Which one?
“He left this world not long after the bill passed. Murdered.”
Balot’s eyes opened wide.
“By the hand of assassins hired by one of the other Three Magi. She suggested that the technology developed here should be made to perform a different sort of usefulness for society—one that met the needs of the city far better than Mardock Scramble 09. By providing pleasure and amusement, legal or illegal.”
–OctoberCorp…
Faceman nodded. Balot felt that she was starting to understand why the Doctor called OctoberCorp his nemesis. The man who had given him, and Oeufcoque, their raison d’être—he’d been murdered by them.
–But how did the quarrel ever get that far? You used to be friends, right?
“The dispute started over differences in thought as to what constituted usefulness for society. This wasn’t your ordinary laboratory debate; each one of us ended up staking our very existences on our views. In particular, it was inevitable that the Scramble 09 faction—with its insistence on legal validity at all costs—would end up clashing with OctoberCorp, with its ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ approach to law. They were now both in a dilemma, forced to fight each other for the right to survive, whether they wanted to or not. Even now, although the influence of the Three Magi has long since waned, the protégés continue the struggle wherever they can.”
–Is the person who founded OctoberCorp still alive?
“She’s alive. She’s nominally still the director of OctoberCorp. But her condition isn’t so different from mine. She’s completely paralyzed, apparently, with only a portion of her brain still functioning.
–And what about the last of the Three Magi?
Balot barely dared ask. But Faceman just smiled as calmly as ever and said, “The last of the Three Magi put forward the solution that was most favored by society, by the people of Mardock City. That is to say, complete isolation of all research.”
–Isolation?
“That’s right. A total blockade. All research and trials to be completed within the facility and then kept here. Our data never leave the facility. The civil authorities accept us—with strings attached, of course—and even provide funding so that we can continue.”
–Staying here, forever?
“That’s right. This is the eternal Inner Courtyard. We call ourselves scientists, but really we’re wild beasts who’ve voluntarily chosen to enter a cage—as a condition of our continued survival.” Faceman laughed from within his birdcage. “Paradise doesn’t turn away visitors from the outside world. But whenever a visitor comes, it has to be under a strict set of conditions. Break those conditions and it’s punishable under Commonwealth law. And the most important condition of all is…no unauthorized use of this equipment here to try and contact the outside world. Violating this condition is a felony.”
Balot digested these words.
Faceman’s gray eyes were fixed on Balot. He had evidently given his reply to Balot’s request to use the computer terminal that was this pool.
But there had to be more to his reply—a qualification. Balot was convinced of this.
–But I think that the Doctor wants me to use this thing.
“Yes, and we’ve already received his proposal, Rune-Balot. If truth be told, I’m deeply interested in seeing just how good you are at utilizing this Parallel Transmission Core.” So saying, he glanced at the pool and whispered, “It’s down to Scramble 09.”
As ever, as if this phrase held all the answers.
“The moment you use this Transmission Core is the moment you become a suspect for premeditated criminal conduct against the Commonwealth. But if we can prove that your actions are in no way criminal but rather a measure to preserve your life, then we should be able to dispel that suspicion.”
–I understand.
“But there’s no reason to put you at any sort of further risk. You’re the Concerned Party in this case, and you should leave it all to Dr. Easter and Oeufcoque to solve.”
–I just feel that if I don’t do something myself, I’ll end up getting killed.
“Not if you remain here.” Faceman spoke in a voice so gentle that it was almost cruel. “This place is a true closed environment—far safer and more pleasant than any prison.”
Balot nodded repeatedly. She understood Faceman’s thoughts, his ideology. But it wasn’t what she wanted, not from the Doctor or Oeufcoque.
–Oeufcoque told me that he’d think about what it meant to live together, with me.
“By ‘live together,’ I’m assuming that you’re referring to how you adapt to society? Well, whether you choose the Mardock Scramble 09 path or the OctoberCorp path, you’re still throwing yourself into the diseased core of society. After all, a civilian with fancy technology is still a civilian…”
–Oeufcoque and the Doctor saved my life, Balot answered back, pressing her case.
–I think that I can change. Because of those people.
“Yes, but it won’t be more than a partial change—a personal transformation, if you like. What humanity needs is fundamental reform. Paradise may be closed off to the masses at the moment, but I firmly believe that one day it will be the model for all mankind. The world will join us in Paradise. This place is the pinnacle of technology and ideology, after all.”
Balot was silent. She had never thought about the world in quite such terms before.
“There’s something that Oeufcoque once said to me. That he would die one day. And in realizing this fact, he had felt a sense of identity for the first time—the thing that psychologists call the ego. That’s why he needed to do something. The budding sprouts of self-fulfillment—it wouldn’t have been fair for anyone to try and stop him,” Faceman said in a soft tone. “But we…we’re like actors who haven’t learned their lines yet—who don’t even have a script. In our harsh reality, improvisation is the order of the day. We don’t know how the plot is meant to unfold, and there’s no director standing in the wings ready to prompt us. We’re just thrown straight on stage and left to get on with it—and this is what we’re told. Live. Until you die. That’s the wild for you. We may be social creatures, but we’re still wild animals. But we don’t have to live lives of improvisation forever. We need a world that frees people from the pressure of constantly having to improvise. A world like this one, Paradise. That is what it means to be civilized.”
Then he looked straight at Balot with his gentle eyes. “In time, as your body starts to mature, your natural aptitude for your abilities will have a strong influence on your mental development. It could even drive you to the brink of madness. If that happens, will society as we know it be there to save you?”
Balot pondered this question for a moment. Her answer came to her much quicker than she had expected.
–At the beginning I was so scared of becoming the Concerned Party for this case. Now, though, it feels like the right decision, and I’m glad I made it. Society might not be able to rescue me. But it did at least show me that there was such a thing as a path to salvation.
“As the victim in the case? You fight in order to request permission from society for your own existence?”
Balot nodded and then shook her head a split second later, as if to contradict herself. Both were her true feelings.
–I used to be a victim, an object. I
was always under the influence of some exterior force. Of someone or something. And, in the end, I was killed for it. But fortunately I was brought back and became a survival case. So if I’m offered the opportunity to help with some other case, one with nothing to do with Shell or OctoberCorp, to be the one to solve it, then I’d like to take it.
Faceman smiled benignly, as if he were a priest listening to confession from one of his flock. “So, you’re prepared to be in the same position as Oeufcoque and the Doctor, are you? You know that if you fail to solve your cases, your very existence is likely to be seen as a threat to society?”
–I understand, sir.
“Very well, then. As long as we get our valuable samples of your precious data, you go ahead and swim anywhere you like within the pool. We will just sit and observe your criminal acts.”
–Yes, sir.
“Tweedledum should brief you on how to use the Transmission Core.”
–Thank you very much.
Balot was genuinely grateful. She realized that the bargain that she’d just struck was a big one, with her own life at stake. Curiously, though, she felt neither fear nor agitation. All she could think was that she had done the obvious thing.
Suddenly there was the sensation of another person approaching the pool.
Dr. Easter approached, combing his tie-dyed hair upward.
He had the impatient look of someone waiting for a conversation to come to an end.
“Ah, Dr. Easter. I’ve just been listening to the valuable opinions of your client.”
“Professor…we’re most grateful for your cooperation.”
“Will you sojourn here for long, do you think?”
“Sadly, we have work to be getting back to…”
“Important work, no doubt?”
“Yes.”
The Doctor then turned to Balot. “I’ve finished my maintenance work on Oeufcoque.”
Balot searched for something to snarc so that she could reply, but while she was looking the Doctor carried on. “So, it looks like the Professor has put you in the picture?”
Balot nodded.
Faceman smiled. “She seems to have made up her mind to taste of the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, Dr. Easter.”
The Doctor was a little hesitant now. “I don’t want you to end up as an outlaw from the Commonwealth, of course. Your use of the Transmission Core will be under my name. All you need to do is work on finding Shell’s weak spot, whatever it is.”
–That’s fine. I want you to show me how you guys do battle, Balot answered, as Faceman permitted her to speak through his cage.
And then Balot realized for the first time that she was fully naked.
In a fluster, she scrabbled around for her clothes, but they were nowhere to be seen, and the Doctor took off his gown and placed it over her shoulders.
Faceman whispered, “And the eyes of Eve were opened, and she knew that she was naked.”
04
Eden and Sodom both at once: such was the night view of the postwar boomtown that spread out across the base of the rolling hills on the North Side of Mardock City.
It was a glittering pleasure garden to the peace activists, and the media folk and the materialistic youths—known collectively as the postwar generation—and it was vice personified for the war generation to whom having a son in the navy was the ultimate, most glorious social virtue.
Rich and poor alike poured into the city from the provinces, even from the Commonwealth’s capital city seventy miles to the north, all aiming for this little region on the slopes, seeking work or pleasure.
The skyscraper hotels that stood halfway up the hills epitomized the thriving prosperity of the postwar years, and at the same time seemed to lord it over the regions below.
Inside one of the hotel rooms was Boiled. A room equivalent to economy class in a passenger plane. From the fortieth floor down were lots of single rooms filled with people who looked after the needs of guests staying on the more luxurious upper floors.
It was in one such room that Boiled was taking a shower, washing himself from his head down, watching blood sluice off his body and down the drain.
The back of his right hand was peppered with holes and spilling blood. Bullets had pierced his hand cleanly and come out the other side, unlike the bullets in his arm that were now lodged inside him. He placed his mouth to the area of skin around his wounds and sucked the blood out. Along with the blood came a hard object.
He spat the hard thing out in the bathtub. A bullet. He rinsed his blood-soaked mouth out with water from the shower. Squashed bullets and fragments of steel rolled across the bottom of the bathtub.
There was a toilet next to the bathtub, and on top of the cistern were a butter knife and fork from the room, both covered in blood, trailing red lines across the white porcelain.
Boiled had used these to pry shrapnel from of his body.
Boiled closed his eyes and flexed his muscles one by one, to check that they were all still working properly.
After a while, he slowly opened his eyes, picking up each metal fragment one by one, then he turned the shower off and got out of the bathtub and stood in front of the sink.
The fogged-up mirror showed a faint reflection of his body—a rippling torso of living, breathing iron. There were also a number of wounds in his chest and stomach.
Boiled placed every last fragment of steel in the trash can, patted his wounds down with a towel, and applied antiseptic lotion before taking some pills that promoted accelerated skin growth. He applied gauze to the open wounds and wrapped himself in bandages and dressings as necessary. No blood seeped out anymore. The wounds were, once again, just wounds. Nothing to worry about.
He exited the bathroom, dried himself off, and put his clothes on. He strapped a holster to his side, picking up his gun in his hands. He passed it back from left to right a number of times, double-checked that it was fully loaded with bullets, then slid the revolver away in its holster.
He strapped his wristwatch on and had his special-order jacket in his hands when the telephone rang.
He lifted the receiver.
–Boiled?
Shell’s voice.
“Speaking.”
–Come up to my room, will you? There’s something I want to show you.
He sounded happy. There was laughter in the background. The melodious voice of a woman.
“I’ll be right there.” Boiled put the phone down, left the room, and boarded an elevator. The buttons on the inside panel ran only as far as the fortieth floor, and Boiled took out a card from his pocket and slotted it into the space below the panel.
The display light for the sixty-sixth floor appeared automatically, and the elevator ascended.
When he stepped out of the elevator, Boiled was confronted with a scene far removed from the previous one.
The corridors were wide, decorated in shades of blue. The carpet was plush and soft, dampening any footfall to near silence.
The crystal chandeliers twinkled, giving off a fine light that seemed to blend seamlessly into the clean air.
The walls were dotted with paintings—valuable enough that there would have been plenty of people glad even for just their frames.
Boiled stood in front of the door he’d come for. He knocked using the brass knocker—antique, analog, no cheap digital electronic intercom here—and the door opened immediately to reveal Shell in a smart suit.
“Come in, Boiled!” He smiled sharply and beckoned for Boiled to enter.
A pleasant voice bubbled forth from the adjoining room.
“Over here! Come and have a look at this!”
They entered the bedroom, where a girl was bouncing up and down on a double bed, giggling. She looked to be about twenty. Her blonde hair had probably been arranged neatly at some point in the evening, but now it was straggled across her face.
The woman saw the two entering and stopped laughing. Standing on top of the bed, she cried out—Ah!—in a loud voice, as
if to tell them something. Watching this, Shell burst into a low chuckle himself.
“A proper airhead,” he said, and sat down on the sofa. “Let me introduce you. This is Ms. Octavia, aka Ms. Eyes Wide Shut—the hidden shame of a famous family. She’s the daughter of one of OctoberCorp’s directors, but she’s not quite up to the task… In other words, she’s defective goods and won’t ever find a buyer. Her existence was supposed to have been top secret, but I discovered her and let the cat out of the bag, and now I get to keep her.”
The girl shouted something through her laughter. It could have been the name of a TV show, or some snacks that she wanted, or even a person’s name—neither Shell nor Boiled had any idea what she had just said or what she wanted.
“She’s the physical embodiment of my business plan. I borrowed her for about half an hour so that you could see her face. My glorious wife!”
“When’s the ceremony?” asked Boiled.
“We sign contracts at the end of the month. It would have been earlier too, if it hadn’t been for that pesky trial.”
Then Shell’s tone of voice changed, just as when a comedian suddenly turned to a serious part of his set. “By the way, Boiled—on another matter, I seem to remember I’d asked you to take care of a little business for me.”
Eyes still fixed on the girl, Boiled answered softly. “There was more to it than I imagined.”
“More than you imagined? How?” asked Shell.
“They’re using every trick up their sleeve to obstruct us. They’ve fortified their client; she’s battle-ready. We should now think of her as another member of the opposition, not just as a civilian.”
“What does all that mean?”
“She’s now a competent adversary,” said Boiled.
“You make it sound like you’ve been in a war!”
“Not that far off, actually.”
Boiled turned from the girl to Shell. Shell’s expression had changed completely.
“Well, then, let’s have some battlefield reports from the mighty Mr. Boiled!” Shell’s eyes were tinged with a harsh light.
“I wounded an opposition PI. I know where he’s being treated. I’ll be heading there shortly.”